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Published by MIT
August 2012 | www.technologyreview.com p72
Why you will wear Google Goggles
p50
Will Germany’s clean-energy gamble sink Europe?
p80
Creating human organs on a microchip
It has collected more personal data
than any other organization in human history.
What will it do with that information?
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2 technology review July/August 20122
8 Feedback
12 From the Editor
NOTEBOOKS
10 Lesson LearnedFukushima should make nuclear energy safer than ever. By Jacopo Buongiorno
10 Data DystopiaWith Facebook’s great power comes great responsibility. By Zeynep Tufekci
11 Safe ScienceLessons from nanotech could be helpful for synthetic biology. By David Rejeski
UPFRONT
15–22 How A123 went wrong; looking for the next Instagram; the trouble with LED bulbs; PayPal’s new leader
GRAPHITI
31 How Much Is a User Worth?Putting the Facebook IPO hype in perspective. By Brian Bergstein
and Mike Orcutt
Q&A
32 Max LevchinThe PayPal cofounder thinks startups should try for bigger things. By Conor Myhrvold
Contents VOLUME 115, NUMBER 4
FEATURES
42 What Facebook KnowsThe company’s social scientists are hunting for insights about human behavior. What they find could give Facebook new ways to cash in on our data—and remake our view of society.By TOM SIMONITE
50 The Great German Energy ExperimentCan a heavily industrialized country run on wind turbines and solar panels? We’re about to find out.
By DAVID TALBOT
56 Biology’s Master ProgrammersSynthetic biologists promised to revolutionize how we make fuels and pharmaceuticals. But it turns out that programming new life forms isn’t so simple.By MICHAEL WALDHOLZ
42
56
50
22
CO
VE
R: E
MILY
SH
UR
/C
OR
BIS
NI LabVIEW
Name
Dr. Dave Barrett
Job Title
Professor,
Mechanical Engineering
Area of Expertise
Robotics
LabVIEW Helped Me
Bridge the gap between
teaching theory and real-
world design experience
Latest Project
Building a robotic tuna
to swim across
the Atlantic Ocean
LabVIEW makes me better by making complex
simple and accessible
>> Find out how LabVIEW can make you better at ni.com/labview/better 800 453 6202
©2011 National Instruments. All rights reserved. LabVIEW, National Instruments, NI, and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments.
Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. 01197
44
PHOTO ESSAY
34 Star GazersWay out in a barren Chilean desert, the biggest telescope ever made is taking shape. By Timothy Maher
BUSINESS REPORT
63–68 The Value of PrivacyInternet ads are a $70 billion business built on data about you. Has it gone too far?
REVIEWS
70 The Facebook FallacyBasically, Facebook is just a website that sells ad space. Now it needs an earthshaking idea. By Michael Wolff
72 You Will Want Google GogglesGo ahead and sneer. You’ll change your mind once you see the technology in action. By Farhad Manjoo
75 Why Publishers Don’t Like AppsIt turns out that apps aren’t the future of media after all. The Web is. By Jason Pontin
HACK
79 Lithium-Ion BatteryWe peel back the layers of the power source for portable electronics and electric cars. By Kevin Bullis
DEMO
80 An Organ on a ChipMicroscale devices that mimic human organs could speed the discovery of new drugs. By Susan Young
FROM THE LABS
84 Materials
84 Energy
85 Information Technology
86 Biomedicine
27 YEARS AGO IN TR
88 Reshaping the Human SpeciesEthicist Peter Singer looked at new fertility aids and wondered where they would lead. By Timothy Maher
79
Contents VOLUME 115, NUMBER 4
technology review July/August 2012
80
65
34
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Published by MIT
technology review July/August 2012
THE RAVAGES OF TIMELINE The May/
June issue featured our annual list of
the year’s top technology breakthroughs
(“10 Emerging Technologies”), and as
usual, readers took issue with some of
our choices. The inclusion of Facebook’s
Timeline seemed to be a particular point
of annoyance. Alec LaLonde of Salt Lake
City, Utah, wrote: “Please elaborate on
how it will ‘have the greatest impact on
the shape of innovation in years to come’?
Your entire supposition is based
on the collection of data for the
purpose of advertising—how
does this at all help its users?
To them, Timeline is merely an
(often unwanted) restructur-
ing of a user’s homepage. And
I suspect the lofty idea of a Web
‘permanent record’ is merely a
side efect of maximizing data
collection, and not at all the primary goal.
Facebook’s much-hyped IPO makes this
decision especially disconcerting. Of all the
innovation going on in this country, Time-
line? Really? Shame on you.”
Other choices drew much more praise,
such as the faster Fourier transform—an
efort by a quartet of MIT researchers to
create a new algorithm for processing data.
“If I had to lay a bet as to which of these 10
technologies will have the most efect over
the next ive years, I would put my money
on this one,” wrote ptmmac in an online
comment. “We are talking about sending
more information with less bandwidth, and
JOIN THE DISCUSSION, OR CONTACT US
E-mail [email protected] Technology Review, One Main Street, 13th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142Fax 617-475-8043Please include your address, telephone number, and e-mail address. Letters and comments may be edited for both clarity and length.
“10 Emerging Technologies,” May/June 2012
“Of all the innovation going on in this country, Timeline? Really? Shame on you.”Alec LaLonde, Salt Lake City, Utah
many other algorithms being speeded up by
this new shortcut. We are living in the age
of the algorithm—this is a big deal.”
LENDING AND MISSPENDING The U.S.
Department of Energy’s loan program is “in
shambles,” wrote TR editor David Rotman
in “Can Energy Startups Be Saved?” Because
of diminishing government help, Rotman
concluded, the best bet for small energy
companies will be to partner with the large
companies they might once
have hoped to make obsolete.
“This sounds trite,” responded
dnwdfw, “but maybe compa-
nies need to grow organically,
without federal intervention.
The vast majority of startups
do fail, and that birthing pro-
cess actually weeds out the weak
and marginal, allowing the ones
with the right DNA to thrive. It’s called the
market, and we need to let it work and stop
letting the feds pick the winners based on
politics and cronyism.”
Sault, another online commenter, took
a diferent tack: “DoE loans are problem-
atic nowadays because of gridlock in Con-
May/June 2012
feedback
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